


Power

by Lyl



Series: Fuel [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-19
Updated: 2010-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyl/pseuds/Lyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuel (n): 3) material used as a source of nuclear energy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power

**Author's Note:**

> mid-Season 3

John was pretty sure that the average Air Force officer didn't get to babysit this many nukes in their careers, let alone set them off. Before coming to Atlantis, the most he'd ever done was flying nukes as payload on his fighter, and that had only been a time or three. And he'd never set them off.

The SGC, and by extension Atlantis, seemed to love nuclear devices. The bigger and more powerful, the better. He'd read through various mission reports of the various off-world teams based out of Cheyenne, and had come to the conclusion that the Brass seemed to see a nuke as a fix-all for many problems.

Aliens invading a peaceful planet? Send a nuke through the gate.

And asteroid heading towards Earth? Blow it up with a nuke ala-Armageddon.

Hostile alien spaceship with superior weapons and numbers? Beam a nuke on board.

City in quarantine due to an outbreak of a nanovirus? Set off a nuke in the atmosphere.

He's sure he's been irradiated more times than was good for any future generations, if he ever got around to spawning them. And that wasn't even counting the solar radiation he's been exposed to.

But the nukes were the worst. He'd seen the damage they caused, and it scared him. In some ways, it scared him more than the Wraith ever could. All that destructive power, all in his hands. His superiors may think that they controlled the use of various and sundry nuclear weapons, but ultimately that power resided in the hands of those that set them off.

Very few people saw it that way, though. He knew for a fact that Colonel Carter didn't see, despite the number of bombs she'd built and set off in her career. Mitchell, on the other hand, understood in the same way that John did. And it scared him in the same way.

It made John feel a little better about those in charge of protecting the Earth, because as long as you had a reasonable fear of all that power, you wouldn't use it haphazardly.

He knew people would be surprised at his point of view, as he was most likely the first to suggest their use in a particularly hairy situation, but that was his job. The decision to use the weapon - be it nuclear warhead, Naquadria bomb or Naquadah generator - was always his superiors, but the responsibility to press that button or pull that trigger was his.

He wouldn't ask anyone else to do it.

No matter how much he wanted to.

END


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